This Week's News

I was beginning to wonder if summer would ever arrive here in the Pacific Northwest, and finally it has. Two warm sunny days, back to back. Hurray!

On Saturday my critique partner, Rachel Goldsworthy and I presented our blogging workshop to an enthusiastic audience of romance writers in Vancouver, BC. It was a fun day, and on the way home I found the coolest T-shirt to wear at my summer booksignings. It's turquoise and has a print of a VW hippie van on it - a lot like the one on my bookmark.

I'll post a photo of the T-shirt soon, possibly with me in it.

This week I have made great strides on clearing out my office. And yes, I know what you're thinking.

Wasn't she talking about this last year?

Yes, I was. My excuse? I've been busy! Now that I'm making progress, I'm also back to daydreaming about furniture, and this just might be the most beautiful chair I've ever seen.

It's a Harlequin wingback chair from a company called MacKenzie-Childs. Could there be a more perfect chair for the office of a Harlequin author named McKenzie? I think not.

Alas, I'm afraid it's out of my budget. But a girl can daydream, right?

Until next time,
Lee

This Week’s News

Here it is, the middle of February, and I’m way behind with many of my 2010 goals. To be honest, I still haven’t finished setting my quarterly goals for this year. My office overhaul is still in progress, my intention to blog more frequently is still an intention, and my website is in desperate need of an update. I think I need an assistant.

On the plus side, I’m writing more—a lot more—and loving it. Even better, it’s fun again. After two years of health challenges, this feels wonderful!

I have more energy and I’m getting quite a bit of exercise. Instead driving everywhere, I’ve starting riding my beautiful polka dot bike. And I’m taking part in a walking clinic. I’ll be doing a 5K walk on March 7 and a 10K walk on April 25. Me! Walking 10 kilometers! Who could have predicted that?

Other news:

• on the weekend I completed the page proofs for Firefighter Daddy (July 2010) and sent them to my editor

• four February Harlequin American Romances were released yesterday—be sure to check them out

• on Wednesday, February 24 I’ll be blogging with the Harlequin American Romance Authors—I hope you’ll join me!

Until next time,
Lee

Tuesday News

I have been holidaying in San Francisco since Christmas—part pleasure and part research for my next book—and while it’s great to be back home, I am now way behind on many things, including blogging.

Over the next week or so I’ll post a Christmas recap—wait till you see my gift from my husband!—and a couple of San Francisco blogs.

If you’re a regular reader of the Wet Noodle Posse, you may already know that The Posse has made the difficult decision to wrap up the blog. We’ll miss our readers, but you’ll still find most of us elsewhere on the web.

Did you make a new year’s resolution?

My only resolution is to continue clearing out my office, which had a bit of a backward slide in the weeks leading up to the holiday. I’ll continue to post updates here, mostly to keep myself accountable.

Happy New Year!

Until next time,
Lee

This Week’s News

I have new bookmarks for Firefighter Daddy and I absolutely love them! I’ll be picking them up from the printer this afternoon and then I’ll scan one and post it here on the blog.

December is usually a non-writing month for me because I devote a huge amount of time to Christmas preparations, but this year is different. I spend at least a half hour or so every day working on the second book in my San Francisco series, and I’m really loving these two characters. I say that about every book, but this time their conflicts seem completely natural.

Work on my office also continues. This week I gave away two sets of plastic stacking trays and seven more cardboard magazine files. I’m happy to report that the contents of said trays and files are also history. I had a laptop network card—someone gave it to me for my old laptop—but I never used it. A friend posted it on a loop that advertises free stuff and the network card now has a new home.

I hope you're looking forward to the holidays as much as I am!

Until next time,
Lee

Tuesday News

Between writing, clearing out my office and holiday prep, there’s lots going on here.

I’m currently working with my graphic designer to come up with new bookmarks for Firefighter Daddy. It’ll be months before I see the cover, so we’re looking for some fun ‘60s-inspired clip art to use instead.



Not this clip art, but you get the idea!

Oh, and I now have the exact release date—July 13, 2010—so mark your calendar!

Why I have so much paper in my office is unclear, but my shredder has been working overtime.

I hope you’ll join me over at the Wet Noodle Posse on Thursday. In keeping with the Posse’s “Home for the Holidays” theme, I’m posting a fun and easy craft idea.

My Firefighter Calendar Contest is in full swing. Every time you post a comment on one of my December posts here on The Writer Side of Life, your name will be entered in the draw. To increase your chances, you’ll receive five bonus entries if you become a follower of my blog (click on the link in the sidebar) and ten bonus entries if you sign up for Lee McKenzie’s Very Occasional Newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter, simply send an email to lee (at) lee mckenzie (dot) com. I know you know the drill—remove the spaces and insert the symbols.

Have a wonderful week!

Until next time,
Lee

This Week’s News

Busy couple of weeks, which has resulted in my having ignored the blog just a little. Happy to say the revised book has been submitted and I’m back to work on the sequel. Perfect timing because now I can focus on Christmas preparations. Those of you who know me will also know that this is my favorite time of the year.

Right now I’m dabbling with a new and super-easy holiday craft project and will be blogging about it with the Wet Noodle Posse next week—Thursday, December 10.

My office overhaul got stalled while I was working on revisions, but it’s now back in full swing. This week I’m back to work on the storage closet, which is currently storing way too much stuff.

Speaking of offices, I just discovered See Jane Work, a fabulous online store with loads of fun stuff for organizing and decorating the workspace. Here are a few of my favorites.

Round magnetic bulletin boards

Magnetic wall pocket organizer

Colorful labels

Can you tell I love polka dots?

I swear I will not buy any new storage or organizational items until my office has been complete decluttered, but a girl can dream!

This month I will be running a contest here on The Writer Side and the prize will be an autographed 2010 firefighter calendar. Details will posted here on Saturday, so stay tuned!

Until next time,
Lee

This Week's Tuesday News

This week’s Tuesday News is being served up a day late.

I’m in the final stages of revising a book, so I was torn over whether or not to attend a workshop—Creating a Book Map—presented by Susan Wiggs on the weekend. In the end I decided to go and I’m so glad I did because the timing was perfect. The focus was on story structure, and I’m now tweaking this book to make sure it has one!

Susan is a wonderful speaker and if you have a chance to attend one of her workshops, you should go for it.

My office overhaul got stalled this week, although I did dispose of a pile of magazines that had taken up residence.

Can you believe that Christmas is one month away? I hope to squeeze a couple of craft fairs into my busy weekend. Next week, after I have turned in my revised book, I can start decorating!

Wishing a happy Thanksgiving to my American family, friends and readers!

Until next time,
Lee

Tuesday News

Things I’m doing this week, in no particular order:

• meeting with my critique group

• revising Firefighter Daddy

• attending a Christmas craft fair

• blogging with the Wet Noodle Posse on Thursday

• clearing out my office

The work on my office continues. So far this week I have cleared out:

• 10 stacking trays

• 17 cardboard magazine files

• 1 large box of books

• a blue box full of paper to be recycled

Since eliminating stuff and clutter is my goal, I also have to eliminate the things I would use to store the stuff and clutter. So the trays and magazine files will find new homes and the books will go a secondhand bookstore.

I’m making progress!

Until next time,
Lee

Lee’s Office, continued

Remember when computer software came in a great big box with several manuals and a dozen floppy disks that took more than an hour to load?

Remember when documents and data were stored on floppy disks that had to be labeled and stored in boxes that took up valuable real estate on your desk?

I’m guessing that all of this:


can now be stored on one of these:


I love technology almost as much as I love reclaiming all that valuable real estate.

Until next time,

Lee

Tuesday News—Writing and Dreaming

November is NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—and many writers plan to write a novel (50,000 words) in thirty days. That works out to about six and a half pages every day, which really doesn’t sound like all that much.

I wish I could do this, but I can’t. The process simply doesn’t work for me. I have tried writing a first draft from start to finish without editing or revising as I go, and have ended up with an overwhelming mess, much of which has to be cut. So I will continue with my pattern of working on the new book and revising Firefighter Daddy.

If you've been following my blog lately, you know I'm also “revising” my office, a little at a time. A fellow writer recently suggested that, as an added incentive, I should create a vision of what I’d like to have in my dream office. I’ve been daydreaming about it my spare time, and have come up with one thing for sure.

I want a big cosy armchair and ottoman. A place where I can sit and lose myself in a book, or sprawl with my laptop and write.

Or maybe a comfy old chaise that has plenty of room for me and a couple of cats.

Good luck to everyone who’s taking part in NaNoWriMo, to everyone who’s plugging along at his or her own pace, and to everyone who's working to make daydreams come true.

Until next time,
Lee

Lee’s Office, continued

Yesterday I rolled up my sleeves and got to work on the first set of shelves I described on Wednesday. So far I have:

• packed up the old all-in-one printer, advertised it on a free website as was suggested by one commenter, and it was gone within two hours. I even delivered it!

• earned $3 by returning the toner cartridge to Office Depot to be recycled. They didn’t give me cash, but it went on my Worklife Rewards as a credit. How cool is that?

• sorted the books and filled a box with those I no longer need. The box is still here because I will be adding to it. Meanwhile, I will search out a secondhand book store that buys books.

• filled my little blue box with paper

It would be great to dive in and work non-stop till this is done, but I’m also working on revisions plus writing a new book right now, and those are my priority. However, now that I’ve started clearing out a lot of the stuff I don’t need, I feel motivated to keep going.

Still to do:

• sort the photographic slides and pack them away

• find a home for all my freelance projects

• admire all the empty shelfspace

Next up will be my storage closet. It’s filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves, and those are filled with a lot of stuff I don’t need and never use. The perfect home for archiving my freelance projects, if only there was room.

Until next time,
Lee

Lee’s Office (part 3)

A million thanks to everyone who left comments and shared their wisdom via private email. Some of that advice is so good, I just had to share.

“I don't think you need a professional organizer--you need to bribe one or more of your friends to come over for a day and help you. You can set up zones and do a few in the morning, break for a luxurious lunch someplace you both love (at your expense) and then spend the afternoon tackling the rest. And you can have keep, toss, and donate baskets set up so that you can make a decision and go on to the next thing. The one thing that is an absolute must is that you remove ALL of the recyclables, trash and items to be donated that day! Otherwise those things have a tendency to either migrate back to your shelves or sit there for months.”

And...

“After seeing these ‘pros’ on TV, I have a hard time seeing how they're worth the money. Promise yourself a gift to yourself with those hundreds of dollars IF you just do it yourself! Get organizing tips off the web and buckle down and organize on your own. I just think you need motivation.”

You are all brilliant!

I love the idea of the buddy system, especially since it involves lunch, and I also love the idea of rewarding myself with the money I save by doing this on my own! Stay tuned!

Until next time,
Lee

Lee’s Office (part 2)

Yesterday I called a couple of home organizers to get an idea of what they can do for me and how much they’ll charge to do it. On the plus side, if I hire someone for six hours, we’ll book an appointment and I won’t be able to procrastinate my way out of it. On the minus side, it’ll cost several hundred dollars. I haven’t decided if I’ll hire one or not, but it’s under consideration.

Meanwhile I received several private emails from people who either didn’t believe my office was as bad as I claimed it was, or who thought it was probably even worse. Honestly, it couldn’t get much worse, but we’ll start with a photo of one of my bookshelves, which is one of the least problematic areas in my office.

On the floor:

• an empty toner cartridge that has to be recycled

• a basket of junk I don’t use (I honestly have no idea what’s in it)

Bottom shelf:

• UPS unit (uninterrupted power supply)

• two storage boxes (in use)

• modem and router

• an anthology of women’s literature

• four stacking trays filled with printer paper, labels, overhead transparencies, envelopes

Second shelf:

• the pile on the left: scanner, two empty storage boxes, a box of stationary and an old teddy bear

• a storage box filled with promo stuff (bookmarks, biz cards, etc.)

• two binders (white) filled with stuff I wrote as a freelancer

• a magazine file filled with research material used when I was a freelancer

• binders (black) filled with photographic slides from when I was a sessional lecturer in earth sciences

Third shelf:

• printer (in use)

• all-in-one fax machine (no longer in use, although the tray makes a handy paper caddy) and it’s accompanying telephone, which works when the power goes out

Fourth shelf:

• a stack of recycled printer paper

• books

• a pile of photos on top of some of the books

• assorted cat toys

Fifth shelf:

• more books

Top shelf:

• books I can’t reach—genealogy, gardening, plus a dozen issues of academic guidebooks for which I was the project editor

How much of this stuff do I actually use/need? Maybe twenty percent. Why do I have all this stuff? For one thing, I have the shelfspace for it. A lot of it seemed important when I put it there five or ten years ago, but I haven’t needed it since. Meanwhile, many things I do need and use are piled on desktops and the floor because I have no shelfspace for them.

For the rest of this week, I will ponder whether or not to hire a home/office organizer. If you or someone you know has worked with one, I’d love to hear about it.

Until next time,
Lee

Tuesday News—My Office Is a Disaster

How's that for a headline?

I could come up with a long list of reasons and excuses for why it’s a disaster, but why bother? I’ve heard them all before. You’ve heard them all before. Maybe you even have a list of your own reasons and excuses for why things are the way they are.

Here’s the strange thing. The rest of my house is pretty well organized and clutter free, but my office has become a dumping ground.

A dumping ground for what, you ask?

Books, paper, shopping bags that might be handy some day, mementos, gadgets that used to work but no longer do, family photos, more books, more paper, knick knacks...

Wait a minute. Did I say knick-knacks?

I don’t even like knick-knacks. I don’t have knick-knacks anywhere else in my home, so how did all these pesky things find their way into my office?

And then there are the organizers. Those handy in and out trays, file boxes, plastic boxes that hold hanging files, etc., that are supposed to help me get organized. I have at least thirty-six of these things, and half of them are empty.

This chaos wastes my time and interferes with my creativity, and I’ve decided it’s time to take action. I might even call one of those home organizers to come in and help. I have taken some photos of this mess, but I’m too embarrassed to post them right now. I’ll hang onto them until I can do some before-and-after shots. Wish me luck!

Until next time,
Lee